The anti-human ideology of environmentalism needs to end or mankind probably will.
The massive carbon reductions being called for won't happen once people realize the massive toll in human suffering they would cause. A pre-industrial Earth couldn't support anywhere near 8 billion humans.
No evidence to support such a bold and frankly uninformed claim. If we could have fixed this we would have - but right now we have so many complex systems which we only think we have some semblance of control.
"The massive carbon reductions being called for won't happen once people realize the massive toll in human suffering they would cause. A pre-industrial Earth couldn't support anywhere near 8 billion humans." << -- More troll lunacy.
The Haber-Bosch process requires nitrogen pulled from petrochemicals (there are no other large sources of nitrogen we can use at scale) to feed a large portion of the worlds population. We literally *CANNOT* go back to guano - people would starve to death.
Edit: I made a grave error in the above. I misremembered nitrogen as the scarce material in the reaction, when in fact it's hydrogen. We get hydrogen from hydrocarbons that we then use for synthesizing fertilizer.
I'm going to leave the above error so future humans can laugh at my idiocy.
Seems like we could cut out most fossil-fuel consumption without making any sacrifice on this front.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haber_process#Economic_and_env...
We already have an equivalent alternative for internal combustion engines for passenger cars, plus some other types of vehicles in some situations. No, not every situation and every vehicle, but if we could replace all passenger cars with EVs overnight, that would make a huge dent in emissions. Yes, we'd still have all sorts of construction equipment, 18-wheelers, etc. running off gasoline. But that's ok, for now. Of course we can't even replace passenger cars; most legal efforts to phase out ICEs in passenger cars have timelines that we should have already hit, but are still years, and in some places decades, away -- if they exist at all.
On electricity generation, new renewable plants are coming online at a decent pace, but we could be so much farther along by now if it wasn't for special interest groups and lobbyists clinging to the status quo. At the very least, we should have our daylight-hour needs 100% met by renewable sources by now, but we're nowhere near there. It's pathetic.
Cars and electricity generation are but a fraction. We need heating, shipping, goods production, agriculture all to become climate neutral or we'll simply continue on this path of ever increasing catastrophe.
What is your argument for electrifying cars being ok for now?
Citation needed, please.
I'm not sure these are examples, or counterexamples, though...
Now consider that in the context of global warming.
Widespead use of lead had horrific affects on child development - and it's even credited for being one of the factors that lead to the downfall of the Roman empire.
And if we hadn't stopped using pfas as quickly as we did we would have had an even bigger fertility crisis on our hands than we currently do. We would have strode right into a Children of Men scenario.
I don't understand how you can blow these examples off as a "lack of scientific thinking". The irresponsible use of chemicals (or, more charitably, unintended side effects) seriously damaged society, and collective action was taken to mitigate further damage. How is that not an example of what you were asking for?
> How is that not an example of what you were asking for?
I didn't ask for examples. I asked for proof to back up the above claim. A few random examples aren't proof, I don't care how heavy and toxic lead is. It has nothing to do with our current environmental issues, it's completely irrelevant to the topic at hand.
[1] No, not really.
Counterpoint: Nuclear disasters like Chernobyl.
Some things just need to fix themselves over a long timescale. If we screw up badly enough, humanity won't be around to see the eventual recovery.